Bed bug dogs - an unusual
concept in pest control
YOU'VE heard of bomb detection dogs ... drug detection dogs ... arson dogs ... dogs for tracking humans? Well here is the latest - man's best friend is the latest weapon in the war on bed bugs! Yes ... bed bugs!
A trained professional inspector will detect visible signs of bed bugs in a room with an accuracy rate of only about 30percent. To find activity inside walls, baseboards, even under carpets, a room would have to be stripped down beyond the bare walls. But due to the dog’s keen sense of smell, trained dogs can detect bed bugs even inside walls with 98 per cent accuracy, making inspection with a bedbug dog a more thorough and accurate one. More accurate detection means that if there is bedbug activity, the dog will be alerted to it and control measures can begin. Also, no preparation is needed prior to the arrival of the dog.
Traditional bed bug detection methods can be time-consuming and labor-intensive. Now, certified bedbug dogs generate quicker and more accurate results. For example, the bedbug canine can search the average hotel room in less than two minutes. Man’s best friend has been used for years by military and law enforcement agencies, but now a greater more general use is being made of their huge super sense of smell.
There is no absolute in the detection of bed bugs to date. But the closest to an absolute can be found in the recent records of certified bedbug dogs. At the detection rate of 98 percent, the certified bedbug dog’s effectiveness shows only a two percent margin of error, which is a margin that one company, Action Pest Control, is hoping to turn into a team guarantee of 100 percent satisfaction.
Why use dogs? The answer is that if they are trusted by the FBI to search for drugs or bombs above all else, or to find the lost and wounded, dead or alive, drowned or buried in the rain, in a car, in a boat over miles and miles, would it be possible for mere bed bugs to escape detection?
Recently there have been many changes in the world of bed bug detection and eradication, and the introduction of properly executed canine scent detection techniques has proved to be the leading method. Anyone who has ever owned a dog, no matter how small or large, well behaved or mischievous, can appreciate the ability of the canine to detect above and beyond many human senses, whether in taste, scent or sound. How often have you found your dog taking YOU for a walk as he pulled you in a different direction? How about when he would not listen while concentrating on an unnamed, unseen substance or trail that caused you to pull him back?
Now employ this rationale to a greater degree, and train that same dog to listen, smell, taste, and find only the source of anything you want him to find, and you cannot keep a trained dog with a proper handler from finding what he is after.
At Action Pest Control, the bedbug dogs have been trained by the best in the field to be hard workers and best friends of their trainers and all others they come in contact with while they are working. A true bedbug dog must be trained daily, kept active and healthy, and be constantly aware of his/her objectives. Action Pest Control claims to be consistent in all those aspects. Their certified bedbug dogs, Sarah and Rex, are not pets - they are invaluable members of the Action Team, and as such are treated with the love and respect they deserve. Amazingly, they seem unerringly eager to do their jobs, finding an obvious sense of gratification in what they do, all the while needing only the praise and love of their handlers to fuel them forward.
From a single drop of urine, the sniffing dog learns the marking animal’s sex, diet, health, emotional state, and even whether it is dominant or submissive, friend or foe. Tracking dogs follow a biochemical trail of dead skin cells, sweat, odor molecules and gasses. For dogs, a scent article is like a three-dimensional “odor image” - much more detailed than a photograph is for a person. Dogs can track a scent through snow, air, mud, water, and even ash. The properly trained and certified detection dog is recognized in court as a "scientific instrument" (US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals).
New Jersey, Philadelphia and New York City now all recognise that bedbug dogs are a great way to detect the annoying bugs that have in some areas grown to epidemic proportion. Action Pest Control is certified by the Florida Canine Academy. Any clients utilizing the services of a company that uses these dogs will recognize that it is a cost-effective way to rid a home or hotel, motel, hospital, health care facility or any other infected building of these troublesome pests.
